Have you ever cringed at internet memes comparing the poor to zoo animals? I’m talking about the ones where they say the reason you don’t feed the animals is so that the animals don’t become dependent. I certainly have. Poor people aren’t zoo animals. Still, is it possible that giving out too much welfare for too long for nothing in return can cause dependency? I believe the answer is yes. The welfare system should exist as a hand up system and not a hand out system, but it seems to be increasingly moving toward a hand out system as the Democrats want to promise voters more and more benefits. But hold on to your seat readers there’s more!

Let’s look at the Republicans. What are the Republicans doing to help the poor? They want to limit how long a person can be on welfare, or they want to introduce drug screenings. They want to tell food stamp recipients what kind of food they are allowed to buy. They refer to them as dependent or even worse “welfare queens.” Nevertheless, I guarantee if you asked a Republican if they cared about the poor they wouldn’t say, “yes.” But are they doing anything to actually help the poor? I would have to say, no.

Both Democrats and Republicans, in my opinion, have indeed failed the poor. The Democrats want votes, so they promise more and more without thinking about the social consequences. Meanwhile, the Republicans dehumanize the poor and want to diminish the welfare system without fixing it.

My solution is simple. Fix the system. Let’s make the welfare system a hand up. Let’s send long term welfare recipients to career counselors who help them make plans and goals to get training and certifications so that they actually qualify for jobs that pay enough to get them off of welfare. Let’s have them meet with these counselors regularly. For example, if the recipient dropped out of high school. Let’s start by helping them get their GED.

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2 Comments

Yes, I think that a lot of the problem is not that we have a welfare system, but how it’s structured. It needs to be set up so that you are always better off working than not working, and there should be incentives for getting more education as well.

For instance, if a single mom with several children goes to work, she will need child care that might cost more money than she could make by going back to work. So she’s trapped where she is until all the children are older.

Or, and this was years ago, so I don’t know if it’s still the case. I had a friend who’s husband was a quadriplegic. The cost of his care was enormous, and the only way they could afford it was to be on Medicaid. Under the Medicaid rules, if she ever made more than 12K a year in salary, or had more than $2,000 in savings, they would lose their benefits. So they were trapped in poverty. Her boss would have liked to give her a raise, but she couldn’t accept it. There was no way she could jump from making 12K a year up to making enough to compensate for the benefits they’d lose. That’s the kind of situation that we need to fix.

Yes, and the problem is that there a lot of these types of situations, which is a big problem. I’ve known a family of 5 where only one person was healthy enough to work getting kicked off food stamps for making 20 bucks over the limit, and I think the family made a little over 700 dollars a month. Another scenario is when people portray poor women as having kids without fathers, but then the government turns around and penalizes marriage.